Large scale structures, such as the fuselage or the wing of an aircraft, the body of a carrier rocket, the module of a space station, or the mast of a wind power plant may comprise composite shell elements forming the outer shell of the large scale structure. Such composite shell elements may be formed of fibre-reinforced composite material, for example carbon fibre reinforced plastic.
DE 10 2009 060 695 A1 and WO 2011/080286 A3 describe the fuselage of an aircraft comprising such a fibre-reinforced composite material.
During production of carbon fibre reinforced plastic shell elements or other composite shell elements, such as fuselage skin panels, the shape of the shells may deviate from the perfect, theoretical shape by several millimeters. Gaps arising between neighboring shell elements, when the shell elements are assembled to form a shell section of the large scale structure, need to be closed, for example by performing a laborious tolerance compensation process at Major Component Assembly (MCA) level.
For example, the gaps may be filled manually with liquid or solid shimming and/or sealant material. After the time-consuming application of the sealant, the production lead time may be subject to a further increase due to the curing time of the sealant, before the manufacturing of the joints can be finalized.
In addition, other objects, desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent summary and detailed description, and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background